(no subject)

Fantastic Four casting: The HELL? Rumor had got me expecting George Clooney and Julia Stiles, and they give us Ioan Gruffudd and Jessica Alba? (Yeah. I have no problems with Gruffudd. Besides, I'm sure there's a lot of people who'll be thrilled with that one.) But--Jessica Alba? Not that it's entirely settled yet--other candidates are Rachel MacAdams and Keri Russell, completing a triumvirate of actresses who have no physical traits in common.

P.S. We were watching the second half of Flashdance on VH1 last week, and--Jessica Alba was totally constructed from Jennifer Beals' DNA. Don't lie, you know it's true.

Working: Edited Black Ribbon chs 1-3 last night. Was dismayed by the staginess of the first chapter--you can feel me trying to tell a story, instead of just getting caught up in it. Did some word tweaking, cleaned up a few awkward/overwritten sentences, but... really, it is so not as good as I remembered it. I mean, I'm really proud of the work I did on the characters and the story/plot itself, but... yikes. I'm going to have to do some heavy editing to the ball in the second chapter, I think, because it just goes on and on and on... although theoretically it does balance out the whole crisis at the Blacks' house in the second half. But... yar, that first chapter. Still, the writing does get a bit smoother towards the end of the three chapters, and I'm editing out some of the interminable bit about the Chinese herbs.

Which brings up something I love about writing on the computer--I can't write by hand anymore, you know. Seriously, I hate taking notes in class now. I used to be a total speed demon with a mechanical pencil; I remember that, when I was younger--can't remember how much younger, but probably early teens--I hand-wrote 42 pages in one day (college rule, fronts only). But now that I write everything on a keyboard, my right hand isn't used to taking all the weight; it gets tired so easily now doing longhand now. In fact, I'm pretty sure I type faster than I write--almost faster than I think.

Which is great and all, but I remember when computers first started to take over typewriters' territory, people were pissing and moaning about how the age of rough drafts would be gone. Not that people wouldn't draft anymore, but that they would just change things on the computer and you'd have no record of the changes and woe. Apparently it never occurred to people at this time that you could just save different versions.

Which is what I do. (Hi, three paragraphs in a row beginning with "which." I'm pretty sure that's a new record.) I pick up the latest version of Black Ribbon chapter 4, which was titled something like "installment4 050304.doc," and read over the most current draft, which reflects changes made on--you got it--May 3. Then I save it as (what's today...?) "installment4 070804.doc" and go on my merry way. That way, if I stupidly delete something and decide I want it back two weeks later, I can just go through previous versions and find what I want. As far as I'm concerned, it's a system that preserves and documents drafts better than my longhand method, which was basically A Pile of Crap in a Box Lid. If you don't already use a system like this, let me highly, highly recommend it. (The dated document thing... not the Pile of Crap thing.)

So. Off to take the dogs for a quick walk, and then back to work I go.

ETA: I took the dogs outside and found a hand-written note wrapped around the front door handle:

John's Novelty Shop

Looking for those hard to find items? Call me, John Rogers, at [phone number] or beep me at [number] (beeper number). I have the following:

Pen Radios: $15.00
Radio/Flashlights: $25.00
Portable Televisions: $35.00
Mace: $20.00
Stun Guns: $50.00
First Aid Kits: $25.00

I have so many other items!!

I will personally deliver the items to your home or business!!

There's something about that specific collection of items that just cracks my shit up.

(no subject)

AHHHH. If you're playing The Flowering Nose, how the hell shit do you maneuver the hell level? I keep dying because everything's too hot, and my understanding is that half the crap I need is down here.